The week that was in the CPC race: Leitch’s weird video, O’Leary’s no-show

The race to replace Stephen Harper this week saw Kellie Leitch release a very bad campaign video, Kevin O’Leary skip an official leadership debate and Andrew Scheer scramble to track down a dummy website apparently intended to embarrass the Lisa Raitt campaign.

Here’s our weekly wrap:

Let’s begin with Leitch. On Saturday she launched a video on her Facebook page in which she discusses her plan to screen new immigrants and all visitors to Canada for their grasp of ‘Canadian values’. For once, critics were taking aim at more than her policy. Social media erupted with tweets and parodies mocking Leitch’s weird body language and … unexplained … pauses.

But that didn’t stop Leitch from promoting her video at the debate in Edmonton Tuesday night. She told the audience to go to her website to watch her video on Canadian values.

At the same time, O’Leary continues to lead and Leitch’s campaign has seen a significant drop in support.

O’Leary skips Edmonton debate

O’Leary announced Monday that he would be skipping Tuesday’s bilingual Conservative party leadership debate in Edmonton because party organizers refuse to change its format.

Instead, he hosted a “fireside chat” across the street.

“It won’t be an election. It will be an exorcism,” O’Leary said, kicking off a question-and-answer session moderated by former cabinet minister Tim Uppal. O’Leary’s event began promptly at 6 p.m. in Edmonton, the same time as the leadership debate.

O’Leary was ripped by many pundits for breaking the rules and skipping the debate, including our own Brent Rathgeber. “His name recognition may be magic in wider polls,” Brent wrote, “but it won’t be enough to put him over the top with an audience of party members — not if he keeps sending the signal that he really couldn’t care less about the rules and culture of the Conservative Party of Canada.”

Conservative leadership candidate Andrew Scheer’s team is investigating what they’re calling an apparent attempt to frame their campaign.

On Thursday a website, lisa2019.com, began circulating online. Leadership candidate Lisa Raitt’s website is lisa2019.ca — but the new website is actually a duplicate of Scheer’s site. Scheer’s campaign insists it has nothing to do with setting up the dummy site.